


hot dog feel like i wear goose goose

by fir8008



Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Crack, Gen, eating contest, guanlin is the ride or die friend no one deserves, yes this is really about a hot dog eating contest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 01:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15159020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fir8008/pseuds/fir8008
Summary: Seonho discovers the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on the 4th of July and demands Guanlin and his passable English accompany him to this so called Coney Island (NY) so he can break the hot dog eating world record





	hot dog feel like i wear goose goose

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! So I got this idea while filling a Twitter "one like = one AU I'd like to write" and decided, well might as well. For the uninitiated, every 4th of July in New York they televise the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest as a tradition. And who better to want to challenge eating as many hot dogs as possible than our five meals a day Seonho? This is pure crack and I hope you enjoy it!! 
> 
>  
> 
> Title comes from NCT U's "Boss"

Many things in Seonho’s life have boiled down to, “I can do that.” 

This has extended to positive things, like joining basketball and meeting Guanlin, because Seonho figured, he’s tall, so he could play basketball. So he did. Even better, Seonho is actually good at it. Seonho’s also good at eating, so he pretends to shoot mukbangs at the cafeteria table, and when scarfing down enormous portions in restaurants, all the while imagining an infinitely large audience of online viewers gushing over how handsome he looked while eating. (But the real audience was his parents, brother, and somewhat concerned friends.)

But Seonho still desires mukbang stardom, which of course led Seonho down the familiar rabbit hole of YouTube and that’s where he found him. Joey Chestnut. The greatest competitive eater in the world. Where was he all of Seonho’s life? Setting world record after world record. Eating a 5kg bowl of ramen in under thirty minutes. Setting the world record for the most hot dogs consumed in ten minutes. What was Seonho doing wasting his time on these part time streaming hoods when here was a world champion? An athlete? Seonho’s new idol? 

So Seonho goes further down the rabbit hole until he finds it. The mother of all competitive eating competitions. The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Seonho’s eyes are wide and sparkling with renewed purpose as he lays his eyes on it, the coveted mustard-yellow belt. He wants it. And he’s going to get it. Sure, he’ll have to go up against the greatest competitive eaters in the world, and consume no fewer than seventy hot dogs and buns to do it, but Seonho closes his laptop with determination. 

He can do that. 

 

“Oh my god, you cannot do that.” 

“Why are you being such a party pooper?” Seonho demands. “I can totally do this.” 

“No,” Guanlin says insistently. “You can’t.” 

“Don’t rain on my parade, Guanlin.” 

“No, Seonho, this physically isn’t possible.” Guanlin shakes his head. “You’re probably going to explode.” 

Seonho clicks his tongue. Simple Guanlin. Of course Seonho has already done the research. And oh yes, this is very doable, and without explosions. 

 

Guanlin is pinching his nose bridge. “I can’t,” he says, “stand you.”

Seonho is all grins. “I’m going to be brilliant at this.” 

“You’re going to throw up and shit for five days,” Guanlin retorts. 

At Seonho’s dining room table is a tray of twenty hot dogs and buns. Seonho’s personal record at the neighbor’s barbeque last year was eight hot dogs over the course of the afternoon party and he still had room for dessert. Now, Seonho didn’t know if the hot dogs and buns served at the barbeque were Nathan’s brand, and therefore he wasn’t sure if he was eating a bigger or smaller hot dog, and if said hot dogs adhered to the strict rules of the competition. What Seonho did know was that he ate what all the adults considered to be an alarming amount of hot dogs and clearly that foreshadowed this moment. 

“Think of what would happen to your grades if you worked this hard in school instead of doing,” Guanlin waves at the table, “this.” 

“Silly Guanlin,” Seonho chides. “You’re in the presence of a future world champion.” 

“This isn’t on your basketball diet,” Guanlin attempts. 

“I’ve found a sport superior to basketball!” 

“You can’t just say that about eating hot dogs, Seonho.” 

“I just did.” 

Guanlin sighs. “You’re going to make yourself sick.” 

“Shush,” Seonho sets up the timer. “Now, you tell me when I have five minutes left, and then one minute, and thirty seconds, and then countdown from ten seconds.” 

Guanlin groans. “I don’t want to help you do this.” 

“Please, Linlin, help me,” Seonho sticks out his lower lip and pouts and Guanlin lets out a deeper sigh. 

“Fine.” Guanlin takes the timer. “On your mark, get set, go.” 

The first couple hot dogs go down okay, but when Seonho’s on his seventh hot dog he thinks, “oh, I have made a huge mistake.” But Seonho is not a quitter so he chokes it down, and chokes down the eighth, and a ninth, and then he grabs the wastebasket he left by the table and upends his guts into it. Guanlin is patting his back and holding out a cup of water to Seonho. 

Seonho lifts his head and gulps down the water. “Thanks, Lin.”

“I warned you,” Guanlin grumbles as he pats Seonho’s back. “I knew you’d throw it all up.” 

“Oh no, that wasn’t throwing up,” Seonho wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His first acrid taste of defeat, but it will only pave the way for more success. “That was called the reversal of fortune.” 

Guanlin’s eyes are bugging out of his head. “What the fuck is wrong with you,” he whispers. 

 

“The reversal of fortune,” Seonho snaps the tip of his pointer against the oaktag presentation board, “is when after eating a lot, you throw it back up. If you do it during the contest, you’re eliminated.” 

Guanlin looks distraught. “Seonho, you’re not doing this.” 

“Yes, I am, it’s my calling.”

“It’s definitely not.” 

“Definitely is.” Seonho taps the next picture with his pointer. “The method I have decided to use to train my body is to expand my stomach and stretch my jaw.” 

Guanlin groans. “That definitely sounds dangerous.” 

“Sometimes you need to take risks to be the best in the world,” Seonho says sagely. “And I aim to be the best.”

“Do not aim to be the best.” 

“I’m going to be the one wearing the mustard-yellow belt this year.” 

Guanlin is staring at him with his eyes bulging out again. “The mustard-yellow what now?” 

Seonho flips over his oaktag with a flourish. On it is a picture of his face photoshopped over Joey Chestnut’s triumphant form, mustard-yellow belt around his waist. Guanlin looks horrified. 

“Guanlin, my friend, my best friend, you are going to help me win the coveted mustard-yellow belt at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. You are going to help me because it’s in New York and your English is better than mine.” 

“No, no I am not.” 

Seonho sighs as he pulls something out of his pocket. 

“It’s too late. I’ve already booked our flight.” 

“You what.” 

 

Guanlin’s eye might be twitching as he unwraps strips of gum and hands them to Seonho. 

“This is so not safe,” he says as Seonho pops a third strip of gum into his mouth. 

“I need to train my jaw to bite harder,” Seonho says around the wad of gum. 

Guanlin sighs as Seonho puts a fourth and then a fifth strip of gum in his mouth and begins chewing in earnest. Seonho isn’t actually sure how long he’s supposed to the chew the gum to train his jaw but he figures that once the gum becomes tasteless it’s probably been long enough so he spits it out into the garbage. His jaw does feel a little sore, so he takes that as a sign that it’s working. 

After jaw training comes stomach training. Guanlin’s eye is definitely twitching as he pours Seonho glass after glass of water.

“And what does this scheme do?” Guanlin asks as he lines up the glasses in front of Seonho. 

“Stretch my stomach.” 

Guanlin loops his long noodle arms around the glasses and begins to slide them away. “No.”

“It’s not that dangerous,” Seonho scoffs, reaching for the water. (It is, actually, Seonho was reading about some competitive eaters who experienced internal bleeding from stretching their stomachs too much, but he wasn’t going to do it to that extent.) Seonho was going to engage in sane competitive eating. 

Guanlin sighs witheringly at him again as Seonho begins to drink the glasses of water. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to chug them, but chewing all that gum made him thirsty enough to drink the water down quickly. He lifts up his shirt to see a tiny pudge where his usually flat stomach is and takes that as another sign that his training is working. 

And Guanlin has the audacity to laugh at him when Seonho spends the rest of the day peeing. 

 

Seonho trains diligently while Guanlin monitors him, looking ever anxious as Seonho chews more wads of gum and alternates between drinking massive quantities of water and milk. Seonho has a big hot dog eat every few days, trying to beat his last personal best before having a reversal of fortune. He starts utilizing the jumping up and down method so gravity helps the food down his esophagus. Seonho works his way up to thirteen hot dogs in the days leading up to the flight to New York. It’s nowhere near the level of world champions and Seonho feels a little bit dejected as he’s packing for the trip. 

“We don’t have to go,” Guanlin suggests. 

“I can’t get a refund on the flight or the hotel,” Seonho sighs. “We might as well.” 

The flight is long but they get to sit in the emergency exit row and stretch out (so long as Guanlin in the window seat can open the emergency exit door by pulling the giant lever). Guanlin sleeps with his mouth open but Seonho has trouble dozing off because his mind is spinning around hot dogs and big cups of water and wads of bubblegum and the mustard-yellow belt that will probably never be his. 

Seonho eventually sleeps, and when they land, he and Guanlin drop their bags at the hotel and have dinner in the hotel restaurant before going immediately back to bed. 

The next day, Guanlin gets a map of the subway and he navigates them to Coney Island. Seonho’s jaw drops at the boardwalk (and the food stalls) and the sea. Guanlin is reading something and frowns. 

“For the hot dog eating contest,” he says nervously. “There are qualifiers. You have to earn your way to compete. You can’t just do it.” 

Seonho deflates. He had apparently neglected to look that up in his quest to overtake the world champions. 

“We can still watch,” Guanlin offers but Seonho dejectedly shakes his head. But they pass the stand anyway, and Seonho looks longingly at the big raised platform stage and the crowd of people and how they’re roaring for the contestants alighting the stage. Seonho looks away as the crowd begins to boisterously chant “Joey! Joey!” but Guanlin nudges him and Seonho looks back at the stage. 

There’s his idol, Joey Chestnut, in his hot dog eating glory, waving to his fans. Seonho lifts up his hand in a half wave. Seonho swears they make eye contact, and Joey Chestnut gives him a thumbs up. 

And that’s when Seonho realizes that he didn’t come all this way for nothing. He still trained himself to eat a boatload of food and he’s still here skiving off of school with his best friend in New York. Seonho smiles, but he still walks away, not yet ready to be in the presence of greatness, but ready to put his training to the test and eat every last crumb on the boardwalk. 

Guanlin walks them to a funnel cake stand by a gift shop and tells Seonho to buy a funnel cake and wait for him while he buys a souvenir for his sister. 

Seonho’s quite entranced by the frying dough and cascading powdered sugar and he doesn’t notice Guanlin come back with something in his hands. 

“This is for you.” 

Seonho almost drops the funnel cake. “Is that…?” 

Guanlin looks extraordinarily red in the face. “Well if you went head to head with Samuel and Justin, you’d definitely eat them under the table.” Guanlin holds the gift shop replica mustard-yellow belt out to him. “You’re number one in our grade.” 

Seonho could cry. “Thank you, Linlin.” 

“It’s nothing,” Guanlin still looks flush. “No one will even know the difference. Just tell them you ate a hundred hot dogs.” 

And so that day Seonho scarfs down three quarters of the funnel cake, and cotton candy, and corn dogs, and burgers, and huge cups of lemonade, and yes even some Nathan’s famous hot dogs and buns. He and Guanlin sit on the boardwalk to watch the fireworks and Guanlin leans in close and whispers in Seonho’s ear. 

“I never want to see you eat a hot dog ever again.” 

But Seonho makes no promises and dreams of next year.

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me on Twitter @jy_kim8008 !!


End file.
